The violet lightning of the phase-shift barrier crackled violently against the ruined factory walls of Sector 4, casting long, unnatural shadows across the enclosed arena. Outside the humming energy dome, King Grisel Nova of Mars and King Sirius Nelphime of Mercury leaned back in their floating velvet seats, watching the arena floor like ruthless emperors at a colosseum.
Without a second of warning, Ichi initiated the assault.
The Black Gundam's high-output dark beam rifle burst to life, sending a volley of crimson plasma bolts streaking through the night air. The sheer heat of the shots melted the asphalt underneath before they even reached their target.
"Maki! Shield up!" Zaki barked.
Maki slammed her controls forward. The White Gundam snapped its heavy titanium shield directly into the line of fire.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The blinding crimson beams slammed hard into the thick white alloy, throwing a shower of superheated sparks across the cockpit's panoramic viewscreen. The force of the impact pushed the White Gundam back three meters, its heavy metal soles grinding deep ruts into the concrete floor.
"Zaki, shift right! Hover glide!" Maki yelled, her fingers dancing over the tactical panel.
Zaki stomped on the lateral thruster pedal. The White Gundam's foot pods ignited with a intense blue flame, sliding the white machine smoothly across the ground in a high-speed right-hand arc. As they hovered through the smoke, Maki aimed their high-output beam rifle and fired three crisp, emerald shots straight at the Black Gundam's center core.
Ichi didn't even attempt to dodge.
In a terrifying display of raw precision, the Black Gundam drew a sleek, needle-like Beam Rapier with its left hand. The dark machine flicked its wrist three times, the crimson energy blade slicing through the air with fluid, effortless speed parrying and deflecting Maki's emerald beam shots directly into the sky, where they dissipated harmlessly against the purple barrier overhead.
"She parried high-density beam fire with a blade?!" Zaki gasped, his sweat dripping onto the control harness.
Before the last deflected beam had even faded, the Black Gundam's backpack thrusters roared. The black phantom vanished from the optical sensors, re-emerging directly in front of the White Gundam's face.
SHRRRRRIIIIINNG!
The White Gundam's left-arm beam saber ignited just in time to catch the Black Gundam's incoming rapier strike. The two plasma blades collided with a deafening screech, throwing intense waves of green and red energy against the cockpit canopies.
The two machines locked arms in mid-air, their thrusters screaming as they traded brutal, lightning-fast strikes at point-blank range. Left hand, right hand, shoulder bashes every maneuver executed by the White Gundam was matched instantaneously by the Black Gundam.
Inside the neural link, AIRIS's processing core was running at maximum capacity. "Analyzing opponent's tactical patterns... Warning: The Black Gundam's response time is matching our neural link frame by frame. Pilot Ichi is predicting our inputs before the physical signal reaches the actuators."
It wasn't just AIRIS reading Ichi; Ichi was reading AIRIS right back with terrifying accuracy.
As the two glowing beam sabers locked tight between the machines, the proximity of their cockpits triggered a violent, high-frequency spike in the ambient Mind Space Communication network. The crimson and blue light flashing outside melted away from Maki's vision. Her consciousness was violently ripped from the cockpit and pulled into a cold, suffocating mental void.
Wrr-bzzzt.
Maki opened her eyes. She wasn't in her pilot seat anymore. She was floating inside a sterile, dark laboratory filled with towering glass incubation tanks and glowing green liquid.
"What... what is this place?" Maki whispered, her voice echoing in the vast, empty mental space.
Right in front of her stood a massive glass cylinder. Inside the swirling green fluid floated a tiny, fragile fetus. Connected to its pale back were dozens of synthetic tubes feeding synthetic genetic data directly into its developing spine.
Floating right beside the tank was a tiny glass vial. Inside it was a single strand of long, white brown hair.
Maki's heart sank into her stomach. She knew that hair. It was hers.
The memory shifted, violently pulling Maki closer to a holographic recording playing beside the tank. A familiar, sickening man stepped into the frame the former Principal of Neo-Verdia Academy, Stain Trust. He held a creepy, self-satisfied smirk as he handed the small glass vial over to two men wrapped in heavy royal cloaks: King Grisel Nova and King Sirius Nelphime.
"Her name is Maki Kimeza," the Principal's recorded voice purred greedily as he accepted a massive digital credit transfer on his tablet. "She is the twin daughter of Klaus and Airi Kimeza. I have spent months stalking her every movement, recording her biometric patterns, and harvesting her biological samples while she done her basketball club. She carries the absolute genetic key to the Kimeza blood and we found the spatial Mind Space Communication trait in her dna. Use this hair sample, and you can build your own puppet."
Maki felt the temperature in her blood drop to absolute zero. The sheer, disgusting invasion of her privacy a man she was supposed to trust as an educator, stalking her, collecting her hair, and selling her soul to space monarchs for a pile of blood money made her throat tighten violently.
The vision accelerated.
Maki watched as the tiny baby inside the tube grew at an unnatural, artificially accelerated rate. The clone's brain was constantly bombarded with millions of gigabytes of raw military data, cold tactical simulations, and forced psychological re-conditioning. They brainwashed the growing child to be nothing more than an unfeeling living weapon, stripping away her individuality.
And yet, deep inside the artificial memory files injected into the clone's mind, there was a single, recurring image that was kept as an anchor: a photo of Maki Kimeza's smiling face. The clone was taught that her entire existence was built to emulate, replace, and ultimately kill the original girl.
Maki gasped for air, cold sweat drenching her pilot suit. Her hands shook violently, a wave of intense, visceral nausea hitting her so hard she felt like throwing up right there in the void.
"Now you see... Big Sister."
Ichi's physical projection materialized inside the mental space, standing just a few feet away from Maki. Her long white hair drifted ghost-like around her shoulders, and her pale, grey eyes looked at Maki with a disturbing, quiet fondness.
"I exist because of you," Ichi whispered, her tone completely flat yet painfully raw. "Your DNA gave me life in that cold glass tube. Your face was the only thing I saw in my dark, artificial dreams while those men forced tactical data into my brain. I am your shadow, Maki. I am your younger sister."
"Shut up..." Maki choked out, her voice trembling as she clutched her head, tears of horror pricking the corners of her eyes. "Shut up! SHUT UP!"
Maki glared at the clone, her grief transforming into an explosion of pure, unadulterated fury. "I never gave anyone permission to take my life! I never asked to be cloned! You're not my sister! You're just a sick, twisted weapon created by two corrupt old men who stole my flesh and blood to turn it into a tool for murder!"
Ichi didn't get angry. She simply tilted her head, a soft, melancholy smile breaking across her pale lips.
"If my existence disgusts you so much... then you must kill me, Maki," Ichi said softly, extending her pale hands toward her. "My life belongs to the Kings who built me. I have no other purpose in this world except to fight you. If you want your identity back... if you want your stolen life to be pure again... you have to destroy your own shadow with your own hands."
Maki stared at her clone's pale hands. Her fingers trembled violently. Kill her? Kill a child who was forced into this nightmare because of MY stolen DNA? The sheer psychological weight of it threatened to break Maki's mind right then and there.
FLASH!
The mental space shattered, violently slamming Maki back into the real world.
The White Gundam and the Black Gundam disengaged, both machines leaping backward across the ruined plaza, their beam sabers hissing in the night air.
Inside the White Gundam's cockpit, Zaki glanced at the secondary pilot monitor and froze. Maki was hyperventilating, her face deathly pale and covered in a heavy sheen of cold sweat. Her chest heaved against her harness straps as she gasped for oxygen.
"Maki! Maki, look at me! What happened?!" Zaki yelled frantically, his voice filled with panic.
AIRIS's eyes flickered brightly on the dashboard. "WARNING: Co-Pilot Maki's neural stability has dropped below 15%. Cognitive overload detected. Recommend immediate manual disengagement of the pilot link to prevent brain trauma."
"AIRIS, cut her link now!" Zaki ordered, reaching over to hit the emergency override button.
"NO!"
Maki's hand snapped out, violently grabbing Zaki's wrist before he could push the lever.
Zaki looked at his sister, stunned. Despite the heavy sweat dripping down her face and the trembling in her shoulders, Maki's brown eyes were burning with a terrifying, fierce light that he had never seen before.
"Don't cut my link, Zaki..." Maki panted, her voice shaking but laced with iron resolve. "I saw... I saw everything. I saw how she was made. I saw what those bastard Kings did to her... using my hair, my data... turning her into a slave."
Maki wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, her grip on her flight stick tightening until her knuckles turned ghostly white.
"I'm not going to run away," Maki declared, her voice ringing clear and strong through the cockpit speakers. "I'm not going to let those two corrupt old men use my blood to control another human being! I am going to reclaim my identity! I am going to break those chains and free Ichi from those monsters, even if I have to tear that Black Gundam apart piece by piece!"
BZZZZZZT-FLASH!
The moment her resolve locked into place, the twin optical visors of the White Gundam violently shifted from their standard emerald green into a blazing, radiant neon blue.
A blinding surge of pure spatial energy flooded through the control systems. The seatbelts around Zaki locked down tightly as the central console shifted its primary control matrix. The neural link override completely bypassed the dual-pilot safety restrictions, granting Maki 100% full, uninterrupted control over every single joint, thruster, and weapon array of the White Gundam.
Zaki looked at his sister, a proud, fierce grin breaking across his face despite the overwhelming pressure inside the cockpit. "Take the wheel, Maki. Show her what the real White Bird can do!"
High above the arena floor, the White Gundam threw its head back, its blue eyes gleaming like twin stars against the dark night as it stepped forward to face its dark twin.
To be continued in...